A to Z Challenge Catch Up Time - Final Sprint Q to Z

I had been following Ros's series  at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ on an A to Z Genealogy Challenge - interrupted by a hectic house move plus computer problems.  So here is my final  belated  quick dash through Q to Z.  

Q is for Queries, Quandries and Questions.  Family historians are always searching for answers.  We can often trace the "What, When, Who",  but the "Why" is far more difficult and we can only hazard a guess at motives for actions.

R is for Research, References, Registrars, Railways, Regional Names and Receipts - a small piece of ephemera that yet adds to an ancestor's story.

Receipt for my graandmother's wedding dress material, 1907

S is for Sources (the bedrock of family history research), Sisters, Signatures, School Records, Sasines (Scottish property records), and Statistical Accounts (an invaluable contemporary picture of Scottish parishes, with the first edition published 1791-1799.

The 9 MacFarlane sisters (Bridget, Kate, Mary, Annie, Ellen, Sarah, Jane, Maggie and Jemima).

with their brother Patrick and mother Annie, 1912.  

T is for Timelines to put our ancestors' lives in the wider context of local, national and internatonal events of the time;  Taxation Records, Telegrams, Travel and Toys.

U is for Unmarried and Umquhile - often found in old Scottish documents, meaning "the late, departed, deceased".  


V is for Valuation Rolls of property

W is for War Memorials, War Records, Work, Weddings, Writing, WDYTYA and of course the World Wide Web - where would we be without it?

X is for the sidelines of family history EXcitement, EXhaustion, EXamining Sources, EXchanging Information, EXcursions into social, military, house history, EXpertise and EXceeding EXpectations.

Y is for Yeoman  - an English term meaning a man owning his own farm, such as my great great grandfather Heny Danson of Trap Farm, Carleton, Lancashire.  I can do no better that quote Ros's definitition -

A yeoman differed from landed gentry in one major way.  They both owned land (lthough the yeoman often much less), but the yeoman would his had to till the earth, whereas the landed gentry usually employed servants to do this. 

Z is for being a Zealot and reaching the Zenith of family history research - do we ever get there?

I have had fun writing this series - Thank you,  Ros,  for the prompts.